


Cards

by rabbitgirl



Category: Zootopia (2016)
Genre: Gen, Judy kind of sticks her foot in her mouth, Slice of Life, Trans Character, Transgender
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-01
Updated: 2016-05-01
Packaged: 2018-06-05 14:19:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,920
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6707692
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rabbitgirl/pseuds/rabbitgirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Judy notices that Nick's ID has some discrepancies. They talk about it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cards

 

"I'm going to need to see some ID, ma'am."

_"Seriously!?"_

Judy Hopps, hero cop (which rhymes in a way that Nick is particularly fond of chanting, no matter how much she asks him to stop), peers around the case of liquor on the counter at the dead-eyed panther on the other side, squinting as she focuses as much anger as she can muster into one deadly glare - the patented _Officer Hopps_ glare, the kind of look that can peel paint, melt steel, move mountains, burn the sun itself, and, day after day, bring even the most hardened criminals to tearful confessions.

The panther stares back emotionlessly.

"Fine." Judy digs into her wallet and drops her ID on the counter. "Happy?"

"I need your boyfriend's, too," he drones.

" _He's not my_ \- ugh, _whatever_." She turns around and surveys the store. It's a small little convenience store attached to a handful of gas pumps outside, home to a wide variety of cheap "food" and "alcohol" that probably gets lifted more often than it gets bought, lit by banks of blueish fluorescent lights that have seen better days. She calls out to the back of the store, where her partner is browsing idly through an aisle of colorfully packaged and oh-so-enticing chemical garbage while he waits for Judy to buy their drinks for the night. "Nick! Clerk needs your ID!"

Nick raises an eyebrow and glances over at said clerk, a hundred little questions in his head - _Do I look_ that _young? Is this a fox thing? Is it because I'm with Judy? Is it because I'm a cop? Does he recognize me from something I did, back in the day?_ \- but all he really does is keep that eyebrow raised and saunter over to the register, draw out his wallet, and let his driver's license clatter onto the counter next to Judy's (his dark blue and red city ID a sharp contrast to the pale yellow of her Bunnyburrow-issued card).

The clerk - without moving his head, arms, or really, betraying any emotion whatsoever - lowers his eyes down to the counter, and a second later, back up to Nick. "I'm going to need to see a secondary ID, sir."

Nick is already pulling something out of his pocket when Judy pipes up. "The heck is wrong with this one?"

"Discrepancy on the ID, ma'am."

Judy frowns. "What? Let me see that."

She swipes it off the counter before Nick can retrieve it and quickly glances over the card, and before her eyes reach the bottom, she's already turned her paint-peeling _Officer Hopps glare_ on him with more than a hint of exasperation. "Nick!" she loudly whispers at him, "I thought you told me you got _rid_ of all your fake IDs! You can't still have these if you're a _cop!"_

The eyebrow climbs just a _little_ bit higher. "That _is_ my ID, Carrots."

"Really," Judy deadpans, "because, to me, it looks like _this_ is an ID for one _Nicky_ P. Wilde, born July 14th, 1986, resident of Zootopia, four-feet two-inches, seventy-two pounds, _female_ \- "

"Yeah." Nick cuts her off, "I know."

The clipped way he delivers his response and the look he gives her - or doesn't give her, he won't _quite_ meet her eyes - gives Judy pause, but what _really_ makes her ears droop is that Nick doesn't shoot back some snide remark, a little goof, a sarcastic deflection - he just drops his police ID on the counter and, when the clerk nods in approval, wordlessly pays for the alcohol and heads out the door, leaving Judy standing next to the counter with his ID still in her hands.

It isn't until the door swings closed behind him and the little electronic chime by the entrance sounds off that she jolts, and realizes that she's still just kind of _standing_ there slack-jawed. With a last glance at the clerk (who continues to stare straight ahead dispassionately (she's not even sure that _he_ realizes she's still standing there)), she scrambles out of the store, towards the car in the parking lot, and clambers into the passenger seat as Nick drops their purchase in the trunk.

She's still looking at the ID when Nick climbs back into the front seat and starts the car. Suddenly, pale yellow appears on the edge of her vision, and she looks up to find Nick holding out her ID.

"Trade you."

She hands over his card and slides her own back into it's place in her wallet. Nick silently pulls out of the little gas station and starts them on the drive back to his (((his?))) place, and before long, Judy realizes that she's traded staring at his card for staring at Nick.

Nick comes to the same realization pretty quickly. "Fox got your tongue, Carrots?" he asks - voice smooth again, smile stretching across his muzzle, eyebrow back in it's proper, perpetually arched position.

The most verbose thing she can manage is an "Uh."

Very slowly, Nick deflates - his eyes darting back and forth between the road and Judy's questioning gaze - until he's sunken halfway below the steering wheel and Judy finally mumbles - more of a statement than a question - "You're trans?"

Nick doesn't respond at first, suddenly feigning a _deep_ interest in the dusky street ahead. He considers a number of responses. Internally, he settles on a sarcastic _Well_ done _, Officer Hopps - keep up the good work and you'll make detective yet_ \- but what he really says is just a quiet "Yeah." And after another worried pause, he looks at Judy out of the corner of his eye, bracing for the worst. "That's... not a problem, is it?"

The way that Judy's been acting for the last few minutes catches up to her all at once, and with a little gasp, her face flushes, her eyes go wide, and she starts talking at a million miles an hour, embarrassment and mortification in every syllable - " _Oh!_ Oh no no no _no_ , not at all, I'm - I'm fine with it, really, there's nothing to be worried about, you - I'm - you - uh - I have, like, you know, three hundred siblings by now - and even more cousins and aunts and uncles - and there's _plenty_ of us that have, you know, been _queer_ , I've seen my fair share of coming outs and, uh, non-traditional marriages and everything, and, you know, I messed around in high school, just like anyone else, so it's like, I've _been_ _there_ , if not where _you're_ at, specifically, you know, but, _uhhhhh,_ I'm - I'm cool with it, okay? We're cool.

It's cool."

Judy's mouth slams shut as her face very, very slowly turns a little bit less red. Nick blinks a few times as he tries to process Judy's deluge of information, but eventually he says, "Oh. Okay," straightens up in his seat a little bit, and continues on his way down the street, the start of his typical easy smile forming on his face.

"So you - you _do_ want to me to, um, call you _Nick_ , right? He-him-his-etc?"

"Yeah. Please."

"Okay. Cool."

And that should be it, as far as he's concerned, but he only gets another half a mile down the road before he realizes Judy is still staring at him.

He slowly turns his away from the road and meets her gaze out of the corner of his eye. _"Yeeeeeeeeees?"_

Judy's face kind of scrunches up (the same way it does when she's looking over an evidence file, Nick notes, or some other hard to figure out problem) in a not-really negative way? Just sort of _confused_.

"I'm just sort of confused, I guess."

Nick groans - and comes _this_ close to slamming his head against the steering wheel, before he remembers that he's supposed to be _driving_ right now and settles for letting his ears swing back. "Come _oonnnnn_ , Judy, can we _please_ not make this a whole thing? Please? _Pretty please,_ with blueberries on top?"

"I - I'm not - " she sighs, and finally looks away to stare down at her lap. "I just don't get why you wouldn't have _told_ me, you know?"

Nick doesn't respond, but his ears go farther back.

"I know like, it's your business and everything, and you don't have to tell me _everything_ \- but... we're partners, right? It's been - what, almost a year? In this car together? Why... why wouldn't you have said something?"

Nick sighs and looks back over at her. "Honestly? I counted it as a success if you didn't know." He fumbles for the rights words for a moment, before he continues: "It's not like I've ever been big on, you know, _pride_ and... and all that. People _not_ knowing is - it's important to me. _Passing_. I - I - I just want people to see me as _Nick!_ No qualifiers, no asterisks. Not Nick, who used to be _Nicky_. Not... a guy who used to be a vixen, you know?"

Nick is surprised, for a moment, at the sudden pressure on his arm, but he relaxes when he realizes Judy is reaching over the car's console to lay a paw against his shoulder. "You're still Nick to me, Nick."

Nick smiles. "Thanks, Jude."

After a second, she takes her paw back and looks back to the road. "Does Bogo know?"

Nick scoffs. "Of course. I had to have a _very_ uncomfortable talk with him about it when I was getting my paperwork in order. He's... you know, okay with it, though. In his own Bogo way. He actually bent a few rules to let me get my name and stuff in order on the badge before it's actually legal."

Judy fidgets. "So, then, the ID?"

"It's old." Nick grimaces at the dashboard. "The paperwork is... slow. _Especially_ for foxes. Getting your name changed is _doubly_ hard when everyone's already convinced that you're hustling by default. Hero cop status notwithstanding."

"Oh. Sorry."

"Eh." Nick shrugs with calculated casualness.

Any further comments are stopped short as they pull back into the lot behind Nick's apartment and clamber out of the car, the alcohol in Judy's arms and the keys in Nick's. Nick walks up to his door with the same fluidity that he's always had, while Judy follows behind a little less smoothly - not that she's uneasy (she wasn't lying when she said she was cool with it - really, she _is_ ), but she has one more question that she has to get out of the way, and she asks it as Nick is fitting a key into his building's back door.

"Were you ever going to tell me?"

_Click._

Nick leaves the key in the lock as he turns to look at Judy, his expression unreadable. She can almost hear the wheels in his mind spinning in the post-rush hour quiet of the city. He holds his gaze for a long, long time, and Judy is half a second away from telling him to forget about it, to laugh it off and head inside and just do their Saturday night movie/pizza/beer routine without another -

"Yeah."

He says: "I mean, eventually. I really wasn't trying to lie - honestly, I wasn't really sure whether or not you _knew_ until today." He offers a wry smile. "I kinda thought you might've already figured it out. You know. Sly bunny and all that."

Judy smiles back.

He laughs and pushes the door open, gesturing inside. "Come in, Carrots. I'm sure after a few cans I'll be _more_ than ready to tell you the whole sad story of Nicky Wilde."

She does, and he will.


End file.
